


As Howling Winds Across the Steppes

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Series: The Ballad of Mad Mahariel [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: DA2 Dalish accents because reasons, M/M, Slow Build, templar!skilltree, warrior!dalish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 06:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5364920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mathain Mahariel has been cast adrift in a sea of violence, betrayal, and lust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As a Gavel to the Lectre

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

Jessyn Brillwater would meet Daeon Mahariel in the Anderfels, her tribe playing host that year to the migrants from the dry Nevarra west.

The Brillwater family, part of a coastal clan nearer Antiva, was dark and clever and skilled with boning knives; and wore their sharp regards in their smiles and the glint of their blades, wily as the sea itself.

The Mahariels, by contrast, were light-haired and solid and skilled with weaving rope. They who had spent most of their generation wandering the mountains, having been borne of a clan wider in frame and sturdier of constitution were very dry and stoic and _Nevarran_.

Jessyn Brillwater had fallen in love immediately. She was Daeon Mahariel's opposite in nearly every way, fierce and loud and full to brimming with music and laughter, long hair snapping loose in the wind like an inky sail caught dancing through a storm. Jessyn was thin; Daeon was stocky. She'd burn the fish in haste by the fireside; he'd sit patiently by the netting.

It did not take much convincing for Daeon Mahariel to trade rocky mountain road for stormy coastal forest. When their son was born, Keeper Briendl warned the couple of the spiritual turmoil the child would face with his mother's blood running hot and his father's blood running cold through his veins. With his mother's dark colors and his father's gilded brown eyes, the babe showed its pelt like the blackbear and thus was so named - Madha'in, pledged to Dirthamen of Secrets. So too would the child grow with the moon and the sun burning hot and cold in his belly - as the great bear whom the creators had slain in order to retrieve the sky, settling that vast pelt over the earth to become the dark loam beneath their sleeping heads.

It was the eldest, Keeper Briendl, who drew the crow feathers over the birrhfire and scattered the cinders across the infant's krattel. What he read in the crooked message of ash, he refused to divulge. Within that year, Madha'in would be an orphan.  When the Arlathven came to its end, it was to a newly widowed Ashalle Reddain of clan Sabrae the babe was trusted, and called Mathain to better suit the southern tongues of their wander route.

Mathain would grow to be a surly child, caravan raised with a thick Dalish burr to his words, advancing through a brooding youth with a dark temper for pride and a swift and cruel intolerance toward the shemlen race. As a youth Mathain would be found removed from the company of his peers, nose-deep in vellum and scroll to hone his dignity, dividing himself away from the temptation to bloody the usual cousin or city-new refugee. By the time Mathain could claim the right to wield a sword and shield in his clan's defense, his Nevarran breadth had caught up with his Antivan height and none of his peers would poke twice to rile him - wise to the risk of taunting a bear in all its frankly misleading tranquility.

By the temperance of his unpredictable constitution, the greater world would call him Mad Mahariel - but Clan Sabrae would know Madha'in only as their beloved Hero of the Blight.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

Mathain put his boot heel to the blood-wet shemlen back, bracing the corpse as he yanked the arrow free. The first shot had been too low, Mathain's indelicate strength souring his aim through shadowy underbrush. The kill shot belonged to Tamlen Birch'reagh, a willowy city-born relative of Ashalle's with whom Mathain had spent much of this dry summer. 

Mathain points the bloodied tip of his salvaged arrow at his clansman for the theft of the kill, glaring eyes yellow under heavy black eyebrows.

Tamlen, a fair-haired hunter with a needling wit, hid an unquenchable curiosity behind his rakish smile and a cold ruthlessness behind both; Mathain had loved him instantly, for their meeting three years hence had spared Tamlen the early lessons that so curbed the rest of their peers from risking Madha'in's displeasure; they met, spoke, and quarreled as equals, fearless and open with one another the way common animals could be.

Tamlen snorts, kicking the second corpse over to inspect for valuables. "We are going to catch hell for this, you know," he grumbles in succinct coastal Ferelden, tucking coin in his belt and tossing discovered bread into the ferns.  "Especially if these are from that patch of dirt they like to call a village." A stiff silence falls, both elvhenan more than familiar with Keeper Marethari's recalcitrance to war-mongering with the locals. It would be the third relocation in as many seasons, should retaliation befall. "Too bad we can't collect their pelts. Earn your _vallaslin_ at last."

Mathain grimaces, and the set of his jaw reads a year or two past its claim of youthful elvish beauty, calcified to something a small deal more adult in its current rictus - a useful fiction, for this winter would only be his twentieth.  He circles their third and final kill, through which he had lobbed his short sword like a throwing axe as the vagabond fled their ultimatum.  Mathain fronts a stony silence against Tamlen's gruesome suggestion; it had been a handful of seasons since he'd qualified for the ceremony into adulthood, capable both in courage and skill. As Mathain's temper had matured, though, so his oddities had worsened; a restless keeping to the solitude of the forest, melancholy even on the rainy afternoons spent opening the warm wet curl of Tamlen's mouth beneath his own. He hunted alone, mostly to fritter away time and empty his snares of their bounty, never once to return with the more ceremonially significant pelt of a wolf or... or bear.

Never once did Mathain show interest in a bondsmate, or in claiming a more official title in the clan's intimate hierarchy of skill and knowledges, content to exist on the camp border, a kept beast or ghostly legend by which children were threatened to behave.

Echoing Mathain's thoughts only the way a very near friend would be able, Tamlen presses on, "It's not as if you are weak. You might not be able to shoot down a wolf, but I bet that sword could do swift mercy to a heavier animal, eh?" Tamlen's own vallaslin tattoo creases sharp around the smile in his eyes.

Mathain shifts his weight to physically dig in against that old argument. "I feel as though you of all people have already compromised your position on this matter, cousin." He crosses his arms, patient, staring down at the twisted shock of horror on a dead shem's face. Calculating.

Tamlen had pursued his friendship with Mad Mahariel by dint of an irrefutable curiosity that had seen them both snotted-up in the dirt on more than one occasion. He knew why Mathain refused to bend to the coming-of-age ritual, but was wielding an obtuse sarcasm to his own ends - "Oh yes, I have forgotten. The day our winsome Mahariel is officially recognized as an eligible bachelor is the day half the free women in the cold marshes make war on the other half for his favor. Hundreds maimed, dozens wounded! Dalish numbers take an invaluable blow. Shut up," it is drawled, teasing, then hardens into a sincerity which strikes like the knife after the caress, "Ashalle was not trying to mate you like a stud halla, Madh. She just... she worries. She was trying to appeal to your sense of duty, as it seems to hold a higher regard in that thick skull of yours over, er, romantic sentiment."

Mathain steps quick, close, not as swiftly nor as silently as his more spry clansmen, but the threat is evident in the owlish glare under the inkstone fall of unbound hair. "And what if I did hold a sentiment higher than my duty? A sentiment that would never fruit Ashalle grandchildren, never strengthen our numbers with fresh blood?"

Tamlen is faking wide-eyed surprise, a smirk hiding just under the inquisitive tilt of his chin.

Mathain allows Tamlen the falsity, respecting his intelligence as much as his sympathy, and the ruthless pragmatism beneath them both loved and respected most. "Ashalle would have taken me in for nothing. _Souver'vhenan_ , I would be a dead weight to this clan, just another blade they do not need causing trouble with the shems."

Tamlen glances at Mathain's gesture to the slain intruders, snagging the change in topic, "What exactly were these three doing, I wonder, this far into our borders? For that matter, what hath brought our winsome Madman along on patrol, when I know for a fact he'd been assigned elsewhere for the day?"

Mathain scoffs, peering down the trail their quarry had been blundering through before they'd been caught short.  He takes a lope down the path, casually tossing his answer over his shoulder. "Another condescension from master Ilen cannot match for desire an afternoon alone in your company,  _lethallin_."

Tamlen steps around Mathain, following the trail, a dart of tan limbs and deer hyde. "Flatterer. I have half a mind to take that seriously, you know." 

Mathain cuts a dark silhouette at the top of the trail hill, gazing off into the underbrush in his pause with a puzzled frown. "No," he shrugs, crossing corded arms. "I'd not want to take anyone else away to a fruitless marriage," he mutters, eyes shuttered against some long-buried emotion.

The bitter introspection soaks in like the dense forest fog draping through the mossy boughs, and Tamlen doubles back up the small hill to shoulder Mathain toward the path and out of his reverie. "You'll come with me to this fabled cave of demons and treasure, will you not? We may talk as we search." A placating smile, blue eyes eager with sparking curiosity.

Suspicion hooded, Mathain shakes his head. "We ought inform the keeper first. Get those corpses burned to blame the wights by." He turns, resolute, halted in his retreat by arms snaking their way around his shoulders. Tamlen's silent grin presses against the jumping pulse of Mathain's tawny neck. Mathain drives an elbow back into the hard leather of the breastplate behind him, a muffled thump.

Tamlen grunts, half laugh and half complaint, gliding fingers through Mathain's dense fall of hair to anchor his embrace, burying his nose in the soft heat behind a long ear. "You know what I think, cousin?" Tamlen drifts his thumb over Mathain's chin and across his bottom lip. "I think, that you really have no business worrying over shite like marriage an' offspring, when you haven't even got -" Deft bow-callused fingers trace the pattern where a vallaslin tattoo might lay, wordlessly illustrating. "You leave that up to the adults, 'ey." Tamlen is shoved away with naught but a snarl for his efforts, laughing, pushing, forever prodding Mathain forward where his stubborn pride would see him stagnate. "Well it's true!" Tamlen darts down the path, just out of reach, taunting and coming up short, an uneven pattern to their usual disagreements - he stops, they collide. Tamlen opposes the grapple, sliding through Mathain's guard to land a kiss on his scowling face.

Instantly Madha'in is transformed. His eyes widen, soften. He stills, tugging weakly against the embrace, mouth falling open under the ply. Heart thudding through his armor, swallowing back an insult already half forgotten.

Tamlen Birch'reagh is breathless; for all his intelligence the risk is still as great in sparking Mathain's temper so casually - and they were both too old not to hurt each other in earnest, physically or otherwise. Tamlen peels the kiss shut, words battering Mathain's scarred jaw.  "I've five teeth riding on the guess that those shems just got spooked by a bear." He nudges Mathain's forehead with his own, the heat of a blush warm between them. "A bear you could slay. A pelt you could give -" breathless, "Someone." Tamlen mouths the shapes of Mahariel's name, ghosting over the letters silently to watch the open hope in eyes so light a brown as to be gold, set in a young face so rarely unburdened of its anger or its cold, dead introspection. Tamlen is stopping short, swallowing, breathless. "And then you'd have the right to complain about marriage." He tilts out a kiss that doesn't quite land; a flutter of skin and one last final squeeze of fingers laced with fingers before he is stalking off, shaking himself loose and coming back to alert.

They had a cave to find, and Tamlen Birch'reagh had yet to catch his breath.

* * *

It was the memory of a fever Madha'in once had in the distant past; from falling arse over teakettle into a freezing bloomtide thaw that had swollen the river thrice its normal size and deepened its current to something ruthless and dark. The Orlesian fur trappers who had fished them out were drunk, and for some reason their cruelty deemed especially _shemlike_ with a casual shrug, as if being poor and drunk they had no choice but to follow their barbarity to its ends.

 _Like dragons they fly, glory upon wings._ _Like dragons they savage, fearsome pretty things._

When it was Duncan of the Grey who held the fevered elf, there was similar call to violence. A ribald encouragement from another shem, "This one still got some life in him, Commander!" and Mahariel was ill all down the front of the polished Warden armor. The world pulsed, quickened. The sun and the moon chased each other in the hollow place inside of Mathain, where his heart used to be.

* * *

"Then let me die, _Hahren_!"

The slap is delivered with force, an icy sting. Marethari is too angry to speak at first, lips pursed into pale lines. "Da'len," she begins, slow, careful. "You have a place in this life that is not yours to determine. Nor is it yours to abandon, child," the thready reprimand is followed with a clutching, feeble embrace.

* * *

The river had pulled deep, an inky mirk. It had nearly been peaceful, that crushing depth.

Beside the campfire mellowing under a tipped copper pot, sharp tang of blood, the grunt of a half-waking fur trapper.  Merril's legs bare and pale.

The sun rose, the moon chased it.

Water in the lungs, it had burned, burned.

"I am Duncan of the Grey. Your death need not be in vain, young one."

* * *

An answering sneer, O _plant no trees, elder. I will bring Tamlen back if I must fight the Dread Wolf itself to do so._

An ache in his veins. No river could numb it. Mathain lost color; time, burned, burned.

"The Blight affects us all, da'len." Marethari gathered the clan around Madha'in Mahariel. All of Sabrae took him to his feet and passed him on, a dead kinsman walking.

The sun rose and fell; the moon chased it.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

It was the loneliness that ate at Mathain, even more than the darkspawn taint, down the long road to Ostagar. Where once he'd slept under the stars, snug in the press of the limbs and snores of his kin, now he huddled against hard ground in a small, oppressive tent. Duncan frankly terrified him, and he was too proud to let this show as anything more severe than a stony Dalish grudge. He hurt, and was hurting still, and could only trade hurt for hurt.

The fever made the days long and the nights surreal; by the booming voices of the Wardens Mathain was driven to the trees, only to reappear by morning exhausted and starving at the breakfast fire. Some days he couldn't be arsed to care, silently pleading that one of the heavier shem he picked for quarrel might just run him through and get it over with. Never had Mathain met the type of shem who considered his intemperate brawling as a comradely sparring, and not the attempt against their honor he so intended.

By the reaching of Ostagar, Madha'in Mahariel had no sanity left for politesse with the King in the sun-gilded armor; he would also later maim a shopkeep offhand for the perceived abuse of an elvhenan camp servant, and was penned with the veterate mabari hounds, delirious and ill as the beasts themselves, all in the hay poisoned to a pique of disloyalty. By the supper bell he was stood from the straw bedding, given his sword and put with the trainees to their task.

Immediately beyond the heavy log gates of the camp proper, Mahariel disappeared into the boggy forest. He felt the earth sing in his bones, skirting throngs of darkspawn, fleeing his chaperone's sharp bark of aggravation. The shems stood tall, even the not-so-tall cutpurse, and every one had a reach longer than he; himself weak and delirious and consumed with grief, could not just then trust a warzone alone with three strangers in the peak of health.

Mathain alone undertook the task to gather monstrous darkspawn blood into glass vials, and was discovered in a yellow-fogged late afternoon skinning a freshly slain wolf.

"There you are," the fair-headed Warden had growled - stern and worried.

Mathain looked down at his field knife, then back up at the inquisitive stares of that swamp-scuffed troupe. "It's a wedding gift," he explained, pale and overwrought, fingers tightening in the greasy pelt of that swiftly cooling corpse.

* * *

It was a bone-deep, bottomless despair that gripped Mahariel when he woke from the Joining, with disjointed memories of tooth and claw and a siren song on black feathers over fire. The one thing Madha'in could recall with cruel, exacting clarity; he was alone. His clan had forfeited their claim to his life, his honor, his shield. His lover was dead, or worse. The shem commander of a notoriously cryptic and violent order had all but stolen him from the Gods' oblivion to prop him behind a sword to meet wave after wave of the blighted, to fight beside murderers and rapists scraped from their jails as similar fodder.

"Rise, brother, and be welcomed at last into the ranks of the Grey."

* * *

"You're afraid of me." The Warden Alistair proved a clever, introspective sort with a city-schooled inflection to his words akin to Tamlen's. This parallel grated against Mathain's raw nerves, unsettling to a mind left shaken from disease and loss.

Mathain took a breath to slowly draw his sword, blade dipping and arm limp with exhaustion.  He stood from the tree against which he leaned, facing his visitor on the wood-softened roadside just past the east gate. "Call me for a coward again, shem, and you'll hurt the too few Warden numbers in match."

Alistair blinked, hefting his shield to scuff forward with a contemplative blow that saw Mahariel knocked from already unsteady legs. "How about we never draw a weapon against a fellow Warden? Ever?"

Mathain glared up from the dirt, elbows on knees and pocked second-hand weaponry forgotten atop the damp woodchips. "And you might not question my courage again. _Ever_."

Alistair huffed. "You _are_ what we Ferelden folk would call a mite skittish, though. Never seen a war camp before?" The softened edges of Alistair's smile offered something open, encouraging and friendly.  There was little question why Duncan had assigned the match, despite the handful of Denerim elvhenan recruits in the camps beyond the fortress - Alistair's genteel upbringing had curbed him toward diplomacy.

Mathain only saw shem deception, and at the offered hand he simply turned a bruised shoulder, rolling on hip to try and stand for himself.

"Right. Well. You'll be needing some heavier armor for the upcoming battle. Ever been in anything that wasn't doubled leather?" Alistair dusted his shield and slung it over his back, bending to haul Mahariel up under the back of his arms.

It _was_ fear that flashed through Mathain as he struggled from the helping hands, breathless and wild-eyed and suddenly Alistair realized how very _small_ elves were, even sturdy Dalish elves like Mathain Mahariel who might stand a bit broader and half a head taller than his inner-city, underfed kin, and - Alistair dropped his grip and stepped away, coughing discreetly into a fist. Mathain had scuffled to his feet a pace away, glaring warily over his shoulder while his sword-hand clenched and unclenched for its missing pommel.

"Or you can just... wear what you've got. Whatever's comfortable." Alistair gave a weak wave, grasping his shield for lack of better place to put his hands, and departed.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

Piecemeal, the Ostagar battle took form in Mahariel's dreams. Perhaps he had been truly mad, Mad and mad again with taint and panic and grief, but now his thoughts stilled. Calmed under the soothe of healing magic quite unlike Marethari's desperate struggle to rid his veins of filth. He dreamt of the ocean, great rolling tides and cool sand under his feet. The liral string music and smoking incense and creaking, salt-dusted landships. Swaying lamps of seal fat dotting the night with warmth, a black Brillwater banner snapping loose from a rope to dance in the wind, hair falling ink-wet over the eye of the moon.

The sun rose and fell, and Madha'in woke in a foreign bed.

The ceiling above was mud and roughshod bough, grayed straw and oiled canvas. Bones and feathers and drying herbs dangled from the rafters, a melodic hollow clank rustling as the single narrow door was pried open by a large-eyed woman in tattered dark leathers. "I see our honored guest has risen from the dead," her voice caught on Mathain's memories, something honeyed but dangerous.

Mathain struggled to a sit, collecting what he could of his wits, the burning ache replaced by a cold settle, as ash after a bonfire gutted by rain. Blinking salty grit from his eyes, Mathain grasped feebly to the first memory that surfaced. "What became of the battle?"

The woman gave a dainty scoff, fussing over a low table where Mathain's bloodied armors had been patched. "The General who was to answer your tower signal quit the field. The... darkspawn won the day."

Gritting his teeth, Mathain tested the stretch and pull of his wounds as if to make free of the bed.

The woman glanced sharply up from the trunk to which she had bent, "The retribution can wait until you're cured, though I'm certain you do your fallen king proud with such enthusiasm."

"I care not what shem politics dictate; only that Loghain's betrayal saw Grey Wardens fallen in their cause. The Blight -"

"Affects us all," the woman finished, rolling her green-gold eyes. "I can already tell that you and _mother_ have much to discuss. If you are well enough, you might as well join your fellow outside to speak with her."

"My fellow?"

The woman laughed, a clear bright noise. "The weeping Templar, yes. Your fellow Warden...?"

Mathain studied his host; her pale unblemished skin, the dyed linen barely covering her breasts, the laced collar of beaded stone. Unkempt hair pulled up into a dark array of feathers and carved wooden comb. "You are the witch, from the swamp."

Tone gentle, hands splayed as if to keep a wild animal from fleeing, "I, am Morrigan. Lest you have forgot." She held out a clean tunic, which smelled of tumeric and cedar as Mahariel dragged it over his head. "The prat outside introduced himself as Alistair. My mother consoles him; her name, is Flemeth."

"Then thank you, Morrigan." Whatever - whoever - this woman was, she was quite unlike any of the shemlen Mathain had ever known, almost as if she weren't a shem at all, but a piece of the cold southern marshes made flesh and given voice.

"Well, I am no healer -" Morrigan waved away Mathain's gaze, pursing her lips. "It was mother who... Ah. You are welcome, then. Yes." She turned to the table and gathered what serviceable bits of armor had been ready. "I daresay that other Warden will be glad to see you've rallied."

Mathain pulls the breeches on with some difficulty - the trappings are all second-hand armor issued before the battle, heavy plait and maille and the padded leathers that set beneath. He'd be warm enough, but unbalanced. Sluggish. "And what of that other Warden?"

"In hale form. He grieves for the fallen." An impatient sigh.

Mathain grunts, fingering the clasps for the breastplate. The armor smells foreign, the dry tang of old blood, the musk of someone else's sweat. Cracking, sun-baked leather. Rusty scrape of double-forged chainlink. Mathain could count the extra weight on his lingering wounds, and at pulling a grimace of great distaste roused a velvet laugh from Morrigan as she turned to face him.

* * *

He knew a thing or two about grief, did Mahariel. He knew just how it could steal your wits, could anchor your thoughts to a single moment and quicken your years from you. But he also knew about fighting, about scraping yourself off the stones and building something like survival out of the mess that had been left behind. The Dalish were well acquainted with loss, and it came as no surprise that Alistair of the Grey was not so readily equipped to deal with the deaths of so many in so short a time.

Morrigan only scolded; she too had no familiarity with grief.

When Mathain had left the witch's hovel two days past the lost battle, Alistair's eyes had still been wet, and were wet even this day, three passed on the road. All the while, Alistair had seemed inordinately _happy_ to learn of Mathain's improved health, relieved that he lived - and it was _that_ moment Mathain had realized that the Wardens had served as a clan to Alistair. _That_ made Mathain as good as Alistair's only surviving kin, through ritual and whatever dark tradition of sacrifice the Grey Order deemed necessary to defeat what Blight might arise. They were bound, by archon blood and common cause, and Mahariel knew much of this brand of kinship, too.

He quieted Morrigan's complaints with a few words of reason, devoid of the trappings of sympathy that so revolted her.

He kept Alistair within sight, within reach. It frayed his nerves to do so, but whatever threat Alistair had ever posed had been disproved time and again, worn down like a soapstone left in a gentle river of avoidant jokes and generosity of spirit.

The night of their departure from Flemeth's territory, Alistair finally spoke of Duncan. Mathain did for him what he would have done for any kinsman, and threw a consoling arm around the broad shoulders (much to Morrigan's unvoiced disgust). Mathain was quick to withdraw the embrace, of course, but Alistair remained dry-eyed from that night on.

Mathain himself remained withdrawn, silently observing. Speaking only when spoken to, bringing himself between his traveling companions only when it looked like Morrigan had Alistair cornered. He'd laugh, silently to himself, at the idea that he was acting Keeper to this odd pair of shems. While his dark humors proved themselves a fast lesson in Dalish etiquette, beneath all the stony bravado his heart hammered away in his chest, fear pulsing thick in his veins. At every turn, Mathain doubted the thrall of authority he seemed to hold over Alistair, as if the broad Warden might any day realize Mathain was not but a young untested thing still weak-kneed from the Taint. It was the nature of the shem to be more as the scavenger - full of instinctual greed - rather than act as any of the more civilized children of the gods, after all, and it was the opportunistic nature of the scavenger to turn on its weak.

The definition of bravery, however, was knowing well your fears but carrying on despite them. Mad Mahariel was a lot of unpleasant things, but he was brave if he was anything. Such bravery had proven itself in the tower back at Ostagar; it had been there in the turn of Mathain's sword, in the arc of his leap, in the wet thundering fall of the slain ogre. It had been there in the strength of his arm as he'd pried Alistair from the dead thing's enormous grasp - though he'd been wild-eyed with fever even then, staring down at Alistair as if they'd only just met.

Owing to the present; the worst thing that could befall Madha'in Mahariel was death - and that was a thing he very nearly welcomed at the start of every skirmish - which left his nervousness to an aimless, irritable drift. The day's light glared through the open meadow, the peasants hubbled as they crammed together in the muddy village ahead, the spill of dark arterial blood clipped the flagstones as the first highway bandit fell to Mathain's sword.

"Stab first, ask questions later?!" Alistair groused from behind his shield, effectively running another criminal through, despite his criticism.

Morrigan laughed behind them, wreaking merry elemental havoc, cursing the bandits for fools with every lash of her strange energies.

At the end, Mahariel stood with the sun burning bright above him, its light gleaning off blood-soaked paving stones. Alistair panted through each measure of breath, grunting as he pried a crossbow bolt free from his side. The menthel waft of fresh poultice, anasthemic burn of crushed elfroot, the tang of hot metal under the sun, of fresh blood, all stung the corner of Mathain's eyes and seeped down the back of his throat in a heady wash. Mathain's sword weighed itself heavy in his grasp, greaves and gloves thick and stifling.

Mathain nearly felt like he might have a fever, if it weren't for the fact that the very center of him had gone so still and cold.

* * *

Madha'in Mahariel waited outside the village, propped against the cool white stone of the fallen highway. The Mabari he'd met in the Ostagar pens rested at his feet, glancing up every now and again to wag her stump of a tail in the cool shade. Both sets of ears twitched at the oncoming crush of dry grass beneath heavy boots.

"There's no food to be found in all of Lothering. Place is over-run with refugees."

Mathain glanced balefully to the setting sun.

"Er," Alistair coughed. "Since I figured you'd be all but starving by now. It's a Warden thing, you know. You'll sort of, go through these _changes_ you see."

"I have known hunger before."

"Er. Yes, right. Well. We'd best get a move on, then." Alistair too readily exposed his back to Mathain, whose fingers twitched in the stiff hollow of his gloves as if to draw sword. "Only..." Alistair palmed the back of his neck. "Only I'm not exactly certain where we ought to start." Defeated, Alistair stepped back to the shade of the bridge to rest, meeting Mathain's glare for a heartbeat longer than usual. "We've got the treaties, and I have an ally in the Arl of Redcliffe, or we could..." quiet, nearly a whisper "help evacuate Lothering, or..."

Mathain sighed hard through his nose, folding his arms so that they might not reach for the shem beside him. "What would our duties as Grey Wardens dictate?"

Alistair shrugged, mouth pinched in a grimace. "I don't rightly know. We fight darkspawn, sure, and save as many innocent lives as possible. But right now we really need to build up our support, and we'll accomplish none of that if we're dead at the end of the week by Loghain's men."

"Loghain's men? Are they near?"

"Er. Yes? I think they're at the tavern, but I haven't checked for certain."

Mahariel clicked his tongue as he departed the shade, to beckon the hound to the wide pale steps that led up the stone highway. A question befell his survey of the town's muddy timbers. "What is a tavern's look?" Or rather, he should have asked _where_ , as shem buildings kept all the same in their lumps of stone and straw and spackle.

Alistair hid a laugh behind a cough, though the spark of mirth had yet to leave his eyes as he patiently explained that they'd be better off keeping a discreet, non-stabby presence.

Mathain stepped close, the mabari keeping place at the town gate. "And how would you see your brothers avenged, if not by the spill of your enemy's blood?"

"Um," Alistair seemed to puzzle this over for a severe twenty seconds, but then, "Are... are your eyes _yellow_? Maker's breath, are you of any relation to Morrigan? You are, aren't you. Welp, that explains much." He laughed, clapping Mahariel's shoulder as he passed, ignorant of the flinch. "No stabbing. Unless they stab first. You know what? No talking, either. There's a blacksmith who says he can refit armor, and I found some light splintmail I think would be more your style, with all the jumpy-type stabbing you like to get up to."

Mathain's expression had softened by surprise, but Alistair had turned his back to lead the way, and could not witness.

* * *

"You can't up and _threaten_ a Revered Mother like that!"

It was not the first time Mathain had witnessed Alistair's anger; it would not be the last.

Morrigan kept a smug presence behind their argument, indulgent laughter low and throaty.

Mathain stalked off without argument, clutching the key to the Kossith's prison. He would be patient, and try to forgive Alistair his ignorance, he would -

"Hey," Alistair landed a hard hand on Mathain's shoulder, " _Look_ at me when I'm trying to talk to y-"

They end up in the dirt of the road, Mathain crouched straddling Alistair's armored frame, pinning him by stiff weight alone, nose-to-nose, fierce silent snarl above indignant surprise. "The same church that drove _my people_ from their homeland, slaughtering _hundreds of thousands_ of innocents, erasing my _entire culture_ , and you would have me, what? _Pay a tithe of thirty silver_?" Mathain freed himself from the half-hearted grapple with a shove to stand. He spit in disgust before stalking off, while Morrigan - chuckling - resumed her post at the bridge side.

"Thain -" Alistair picked himself up, glaring over at Morrigan. "Oh stuff it, would you."

Morrigan donned a mask of exaggerated sympathy. "Not everyone in Thedas as much a mindless git for your beloved chantry? Feeling rather outmatched right about now, are we?"

"I never meant to - oh, shut up! You only ever have to make things _worse_ , don't you?"

Morrigan sneered, trying to collect her composure. "I have done no such thing, but my heart bleeds for you." A hiss of air through teeth, "Truly. _His_ people had to survive a years-long massacre, but that's nothing compared to the MINUTES of awkward conversation to which _you_ just played witness. Poor thing!" Calling after Alistair's stiff-backed retreat; "Did he hurt _your_ feelings especially, when he called her an ignorant pig glutted on the empty hopes of her blind children - ?"

* * *

There was one thing that Mathain Mahariel could catalogue before he was propelled through the tavern door by a hard shove, and that was just how much blood looked like so much _more_ when it was spilled in an enclosed space; as opposed to when it was spilled out of doors and had a bit of room to stretch out and soak in. Not just... pool and splash everywhere; on tables, puddling along the uneven floorboards, specks and dollops - flecked about by their violent struggle - landing on the skirt hems and ashen faces of patrons who couldn't scurry away fast enough.

Mathain didn't get the chance to stumble, Alistair's gauntlet-hard fingers dug firm in the neckline of his armor, scraping between his collarbone and the leather.

"You," Alistair did not shout, words bitten and growled around a bruised mouth. "Have _got_ to _stop_ killing people!" A rough shake.

The laysister followed close behind, expression drawn but resolute under her mussed red hair. "It is finished; we can all stop fighting now yes?" A slim hand lighted on Alistair's greave, and Mathain was released before his confusion could harden into offense.

"They attacked-"  
"They surrendered-"  
"-you." Mathain had balked, hand on his sword pommel as if to draw it anew.

Alistair blinked, surprise quickly ebbed back by residual horror at the cold murder he'd just witnessed. "They had surrendered," he reiterated, jaw set. The Sister beside him silently nodded.

Mathain glowered, but did not meet Alistair's eye (and, by the Sister's amused observation, might have been pouting a bit). He released his sword, still in need of a good cleaning, and crossed his arms. "They attacked - " a level stare, "us. I would not give them the chance to rally, or to tell of our location. What good the word of men who follow someone as vile and shiftless as Loghain?"

Alistair rubbed his face, turning his back to stalk down the crowded evening streets. "Who even _talks_ like that?" He lamented, but on passing Morrigan's post on the bridge, remarked that all isolated forest folk were cracked in the skull and stuck a good hundred years behind everyone else in terms of, well... not quite barbarity, and... not quite education. Communication? Idealism? Alistair himself was not a _stupid_ man by any means. Few rumors ever reached him concerning the Dalish, and those that did make the daily gossip had painted the nomads as nothing more than raiders. He was beginning to suspect where people had got _that_ impression, but what he couldn't understand was the _depth_ behind Mathain's actions. He seemed to take everything so damned _personally_ , responding to slights of honor with, well, with the mess they'd just made of that poor tavern.

And Maker, the way he spoke! Alistair was counting the days before Mathain pulled out a few 'thou's and 'thy's and maybe a 'hither' or 'thither' or 'whence', and on second thought, he'd already used 'whence'. Twice. Which was really saying something, because it wasn't as if the man spoke very much at all, not unless he was arguing his right to stab things.

Alistair turned at the steps of the chantry to see if the Laysister had followed and was startled to find that she had, and that Mathain had come silently alongside. The Qunari was waiting for their approach just inside the steps, having collected what meager belongings the officials had confiscated for his imprisonment, chief of which were a set of armors more sized to his giant frame. A weapon large enough for this 'Sten' to wield effectively, they would have to purchase. From the vendors who were all now properly terrified of Mathain.

Which was, as Alistair put it, 'bloody arsome'.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

The map was new, a fold of supple doeskin tattooed by ink, a near-perfect replica of Ferelden as it stood. Mathain worked over the roads and dotted forests by jabbing a heated needle deftly into the fold of hide. He pinched the needle over the candleflame, then scraped it against the crust gathered thick and dull around the rim of the inkpot, blowing on the fresh marks before blotting them gently with a torn bit of burlap. Once satisfied, Mathain nodded to Alistair, who had been hovering silently. "We are here," Mathain circled the windmill of Lothering with a knuckle. "Our nearest refute is your Arldom in the Red Cliffs, here... and you say our mage treatise can be addressed not too far from that, and so on to the _Durgen'len_ kingdoms, over the westernmost mountains. Frostkeep?"

"Frostback."

"Hn." Mathain gnawed the tip of his thumb, absently smudging ink and ash against the corner of his mouth. His eyes narrowed in focus under thick, thoughtful brows, pupils large in the dim of their supplies tent. "Which would leave our last treatise with my people, who won't be easy to find." A shrug, a shake of the head, voice rolling into a churr of doubt, "Less so if we're searching the hard landscape of the Westers."

"Your clan was nearer Endsmarch, south of Denerim, wasn't it? In the Brecelians." Alistair tapped the map and Mathain stilled.

"Aye, but we should have to double-back sometime before trekking near to Orlais for the Durgen."

Alistair's voice held the waver of uncertainty, a thin shield kept always in their talks. "What's to stop us from simply making the Brecelian forest our first destination? Get it done and over with, then travel west from then on?"

"Is your ally so secure from Loghain that we might delay in meeting with him?"

Alistairs laughed, nervous. "Good point." A contemplative silence settled between the Wardens, broken only by the scrape of the whetstone the Sten was using on his great-axe just outside the tent. Alistair straightened from the barrel improvising as a table. "Whichever you choose, we leave at first light, so go ahead and get some res-"

"I shan't turn back from this, ye ken? I _won't_." Mathain's insistent whisper interrupted.

Alistair slumped, defeated by confusion. "All right, I'll bite. Turn back, turn back from what?"

"If we were to search the forest. Even if we ought find my own clan; I would not see myself returned to them. I would see the Blight ended, first."

"I... had assumed," Alistair announced slowly, uncertain. "You are obviously a man of your word, and you owed Duncan; isn't - isn't that what you said? Made the vow?" His voice softened ruefully, "I've never doubted you for all that."

Mathain gave a quiet, displeased grunt and began to fold the map in on itself. "Yet you suspect I am more Dalish than Warden, even now?" A forgiving wave. "Aye, 'tis true, even if the worry has yet to settle on _your_ shoulders. First and foremost, I am a Wanderer of the Dales. But I will not quit my place in this world, among the ranks of the Grey."

"Yes..." Alistair rubbed the back of his neck, pulling up a barrel to take a heavy sit. "Thain," he stopped, exhaled evenly, searched the space between his curled hands. "Why do you suppose neither Duncan nor I introduced ourselves with surnames?"

"Because _you_ announce yourself an orphan bastard, and Duncan presumably the same?"

"Hah! Ah, no. Duncan is, er, _was_ 'of the Grey'. I, am Alistair of the Grey. You? Mathain of the Grey. You aren't Dalish; you aren't even Mahariel, according to doctrine. Nothing goes above your Warden duties; not family or friends, not lovers, no old jobs or noble titles or dark criminal pasts take priority. Maker, none of that _matters_ anymore." Alistair loosely cupped one fist in the other, cracking his knuckles, meeting Mathain's eye. "We slay darkspawn, protect the innocent to our best ability, and wake up the next day to do it all over again. 'In war, victory; in peace, vigilance; in death, sacrifice'. Scrub, wring, hang. Bottom line, end of job description. Full stop."

Mathain stood, and Alistair silently congratulated himself on not flinching. " _Vir assan; vir bor'assan; vir adahlen_!" A hard laugh, eyes and teeth flashing.

Alistair balked. "It's... I know it's a bit hard to accept. I know you didn't exactly have a choice in all this, but - "

Mathain shook his head, shoulders hitching while his chin dipped. As he sobered to regard Alistair, his eyes glinted with mirth. "I prefer the Warden philosophy. Know you what _Vir Assan_ means? _Bor'Assan_? _Adahlen_?"

"Er," 

"Everything _I_ have, for the past nineteen winters, _failed to uphold_." Mathain threw his hands forward, teeth bright in another laugh. "To fly straight as an arrow, unwavering? Hah! Most days I do not waver so much as _careen_ from the path set before me. And the second, _Vir Bor'Assan_ , it is the way of the bow. To bend, but never break!" Mathain stepped into a small, agitated pacing, strung with emotion. "You have known me all of two weeks and already must know I do _not bend for anything_ , do you not?"

Eyes averted, Alistair dipped his chin in a forgiving nod, mouth pulled to a slant.

"And the third, Alistair of the Grey, and the most difficult, is the way of the forest. Could you only guess? 'Tis as simple as the defeat of the thin sapling branch; take one branch and you may snap it easily. But gather three, five branches in your hand at once and their strength expounds. _Vir Adahlen_ ; together we are stronger than one." Mathain let out a scoff so loud Alistair thinks he knows the truth of the term 'barking mad', and this being more words strung together than the sum of all words out of Mathain since the swamp. "I..." Mathain paused, seeking a draw between his anger and regret, "Have _never_ got on well with others."

Alistair broke his stunned silence at last, "Nooo, I couldn't _imagine_."

Mathain placed a hand on Alistair's shoulder, as if to steady himself over his seated companion. The headbutt was swift, a dull crack of skull meeting skull, and Mathain took his leave of the tent, followed by Alistair's bent whine of pained confusion.

* * *

The weather along their route was mild and wet, quiet as the darkspawn mass had not yet bled so far north. Alistair planned to gather proper coin for their cause from Arl Eamon of Redcliffe, but in the meantime the party would live as Mathain had lived the entirety of his life - off the bounty of the land. Mathian strung game traps with clever fingers; baiting and tending those traps with unwavering patience, and after delivering the day's catch for use or for sale would slip back to the forest unbidden. Whether he was searching for his kin or simply could not bear the shem-crowded camp went unasked.

On the larger scale of things, Madha'in enjoyed being a Warden. Once the illness of the Taint had been addressed, he'd only nightmares to contend with - and those had never strayed far from his slumber. But though he reveled in the newfound freedoms of the Wardens (born to his predisposition for violence), Mathain could not shake the purveying _loneliness_ that had crippled him at the start of his induction. He found himself sleeping with his back to the Mabari's for warmth and a second heartbeat, though the smell could drive him from the comfort of even that. At times, provoking Alistair was just an excuse for Mathain to _touch_ him, even if it were a shove.

At other times, provoking Alistair was done quite accidentally, and Mathain found himself reeling back, panic sour in his gut. He'd shut his words away, cross his arms and spread his stance wider, listening intently for the moment exactly where their cultures had clashed _that_ time around. And why, and how, and to what exact effect, and all else. Eventually Alistair would run out of steam; he never stayed angry for very long, if it ever was anger and not ill-vented shock. It was in that calm after the one-sided storm, with Alistair nonplussed over just why Mathain wasn't retaliating and Mathain contemplative and indulgent over Alistair's sheer _shem_ hood - in _that_ moment, the world seemed to shrink around Mathain and expand at the same time, empty but for the two of them, small enough that he could swallow the sky, large enough that he would have to cross oceans just to reach over and clasp Alistair's shoulder.

Mathain would not push any further during those arguments, and indeed made himself scarce all throughout their continued trek into the borders of the dark forested land that concealed his clan. He had decided to take kindly toward Alistair if only because they were as much of a clan to each other as there could be and clans generally worked better when everyone got along - at least on a superficial level. Which, as was often the case with Mathain even with his _old_ clan, getting on with Alistair or the laysister or even Morrigan mostly meant avoiding them.

* * *

It was under the familiar fold of mossy branches that Mathain returned to camp one night, Morrigan alert on the watch with a respectful nod. Alistair was curled in his bedroll nearer the supplies tent, stretching out to a sprawl when Mathain curiously nudged his ribs with his boot - which wasn't a kick, no matter how amusing Morrigan thought it to insist as much or beg he try again harder.

Perhaps it was the nostalgia of that specific forest, those specific woods, the cool damp under the trees and the noisome cacophony of insects and frogs, the smell of loam and peat and moss, the gentled flow of the wind through fragrant trees. Maybe it was the panic edging at the corner of Mathain's mind that he might not be able to find any clan at all, nevermind his own; that the Dalish world had disappeared from his grasp as easily as it had from that of the Chantry. Or it could have been the ache eating away at the core of him, the hunger that wasn't 'Warden changes' and wasn't illness and wasn't anything to do with food. Whatever it was, now that Alistair had made room enough, Mathain had laid down without a second thought and curled up atop the warmed bedroll. It was as natural a habit as eating by a crowded campfire or bathing at a riverside with the rest of his ilk - certainly never something for which he would have thought to seek _permission._

Alistair lay sleeping on his stomach, and mistook the extra weight against his ribs for that of the Mabari... until sometime before he was to wake for his watch hour and turned to catch the scent of sandalwood and anber grease - a far cry from kaddis stink. Morrigan nudged Alistair's boot daintily with her own to wake him and seemed to take great mocking interest in the whole ordeal, especially when she caught the look of utter terror with which Alistair regarded his bedroll guest.

Morrigan could not contain her outburst of laughter - Alistair rolled swiftly free of his sleeping mat lest he be stabbed; Mathain did not stir from the noise.

The second day following this unmentionable incident, Mathain was close to despair. He had not yet found hide nor hair of his people, and even the Halla eluded him, gone from their usual grazing haunts. It was with abject misery that Mathain sat beside Alistair at the doling-out of supper and did not leave his silent post well past the meal's end, brooding over his next course of search. To Mathain, seeking out the close bonds he shared with his old clan was not so impractical, largely ignorant of shem habits and inhibitions and social norms as he was. Where usually a friend or mentor had awaited with a consoling arm, now all he faced was Alistair's bewilderment or Leliana's hesitation, Morrigan's cold raised eyebrow and Sten's growled lectures; all of which stung like rejection.

Mathain huddled closer to Alistair, glaring into the fire. They were _clan_ , were they not? Bound by oath and blood -

Alistair swallowed and, after a heartbeat, pressed back into the lean. Mathain breathed a little easier, scowl loosening back into the far-away pinch of anxiety.

* * *

Mathain cast an arm out to catch Leliana's bare middle, halting their advance down the thickly overgrown path. Alistair trundled up alongside the Sten, both overburdened with packs of gear (Bodahn's cart too cumbersome to fit through the trees). Mathain bundled Leliana back, gripping Alistair's elbow and all but stuffing them both toward the unmarked road from which they had deviated.

Sten stepped helpfully out of the way, eyes narrowed over the heads of the party to see what lay ahead. "There are small naked monkeys beyond that oak." He unshouldered the traveling pack, settling to a knee with all the careful administration of a body used to navigating a world built too closely around it. "We near our goal."

Mathain crept around the Sten in a crouch, cupped hands to his mouth to call out in birdsong. Alistair and Leliana shared a look, resolving not to be left behind, and followed despite Mathain's warning glare. The children stood no taller than Mathain's shoulder, and though the smallest, knee-high, had been sent to the back of the group, they made no startle and took no leave of the visitors. This visibly rankled Mathain, who called out another birdsong then pointed at the very obvious shems behind himself, shoulders a line of reproach.

All eyes were now pointed their way, large and jewel-like in faces both round and thin, dark and light. "We caught a rabbit," the second-tallest bragged, striding past the oldest to proudly display the gutted carcass by the dangle of its feet.

Mathain's shoulders dropped, and he nodded as if to admit that _was_ a worthy announcement. " _Aneth ara_ , da'len. What business have you all outside of your camp's borders, then?" Eyebrow raised, "Just the rabbit?"

The children passed a look around, and the scattered gathering stepped further down the path toward Mathain - who had left Alistair and Leliana standing ten paces behind with a curt slice of the hand and a warning glare. "Ain't outside," one child lifted his chin toward a carved stone overgrown in its moss.

Mathain took a knee, and a child appeared from a fern beside him to climb into his arms, sucking its thumb. "Where are your border patrol?"

The children, as a bug-bit scab-kneed adventuring huddle, looked to the treetops.

Mathain followed their gaze, and let the oldest take the little one from his arms as he stood. "Alistair, get thyself to Bodahn's cart."

Alistair looked back up the path, startled to discover that Leliana had already departed, and the Sten had shouldered his pack and stood in expectation of their retreat. Reluctant that he always seemed to be the last to know what was going on, Alistair lingered. "We'll await your word. Nightfall at _the latest_ , Warden."

The Dalish children flicked wide eyes Alistair's way, one or three stepping to put themselves between he and Mathain, their belt knives out despite the quick snag of Mathain's grip on the nearest collar. Alistair held his hands free of his sword pommel, turning his back both to hide his smile and to take his leave of the scene - that of Mathain Mahariel quickly overrun by a wild press of eagerly curious Dalish children.


	2. Chapter 2

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

The first Alistair had thought of Thain Mahariel had been 'dead recruit walking', having played witness to ever more cases of the Taint as the darkspawn incursion escalated near Ostagar. There was surprise, of course, and a bit of hope and a bit of relief when Mathain survived the Joining, though not to anyone's immediate benefit.

Mathain had carried that shocked, glassy look about him from the onset, bright eyes wide and owlish under scowling brows. The mass of his black hair had flown wildly about his drawn face, and like a rabid thing he had attacked the members of the war camp at their unwitting provocation. Alistair nearly feared they'd have to kill him out of mercy, but a solid unwavering l _ook_  from Duncan had stilled that suggestion in his throat.

'Give him time, Alistair.'

Alistair, because he trusted Duncan, had given Mathain time; watched him closely, as was his place as senior Warden; witnessed Mathain recover, after the terrible loss at Loghain's betrayal, into something more befitting a Grey Warden - though he still pulled odd stunts and answered every disagreement with violence.

For his part, Mathain had shown intelligence in any rare (long-winded) piece of dialogue - which argued sanity. His eyes shed their wild shock and took on a keen, often guarded edge, startled glare on its return once or twice should Alistair catch him lost in thought at the fireside. Mathain smartened up his hair and armor and acted as a proud cat might after a harmless scare had knocked it off its duvet, strutting about as if nothing wrong had happened at all and everything was exactly as he had orchestrated it.

Well, not strutting exactly. Thain didn't strut. He could march, he could pace, or crouch, or leap, or nervously stride across the open spaces they often had to ford traveling through Ferelden's farmland. He hauled equipment well, too, wider in the shoulders than any of the elves this far south of Nevarra. At any rate, Mahariel had visibly changed since the onset of their uncertain journey. When he'd consoled Alistair over the loss of the Wardens and Duncan's death, he had shown a compassion and understanding for grief that Alistair had been sure was absent in the face of his bald ruthlessness. It only proved what a cock-up first impressions could be.

But by then Alistair had already made his own unfavorable first impression, and figured perhaps Mathain thought him bossy or stupid or - Maker forbid -  _weak_. This assumption proved wrong with every nervous twitch Mathain would throw his way, every hesitation in his step at the end of the fighting day. He'd once or twice called Alistair naive, yes, but then he thought all 'shemlen' were naive. It didn't take Alistair long to figure out the physical attacks were a sort of training, a type of tough love Mathain himself might have been given all throughout his wandering life. The Dalish had every reason to keep each other on their toes, after all.

And then, once Alistair was  _certain_ he had Mathain figured out, an instance, more usually an argument, would rear to disprove his theories. Like waking to find he had shared a bedroll for half the night with the twitchy stab-happy lunatic. Or commenting off-hand, and instead of the immediate explosive response, only finding there to be an unsettling silence and something like sadness coloring Mathain's unnerving scrutiny.

It was a perilous attempt trying to understand the man, so Alistair stopped trying to understand at all and learned to take things as they came. So, it was with great relief when they reached the Brecelian forest camp, that Alistair found  _most_  Dalish to be just as bowstring-twitchy and huggy-feely and glare-y stabby as Mathain himself.

Right. Anyway. The Dalish Camp, with all its delicately decorated aravels and cozy cluttered array of craft stalls and cookfires. So, then Mathain... Mathain was different. Suddenly he was  _Madha-een Maha-ree-ul_ , not Thane-of-the-Grey (because really, what a mouthful) and he was, er, just  _different_.

Mathain was found absent of the twitches and flinches, there in the press of elves who were, for all Alistair could guess, perfect strangers to him. He clasped hands and spoke openly and made eye contact and embraced those who would throw their arms around him (and here Alistair would expect the young to do so, or even the unmarried women, surprised to find that even the married and the men of the clan were as affectionate). Mathain would  _smile_ , and return the greeting kisses and hold the fiercely painted Va'Linis children on his shoulders and to his hip as if they were his own.

Learning of his induction into the Grey Wardens, many of the remaining hunters thrust tokens of luck and little wooden idols of the Forgotten One, the Destroyer Nnar, into Mathain's possession. They pinned his hair up with bone combs and wooden-beaded thongs of leather to keep it out of his eyes, marking the newly donated hunting leathers with the Halla skull raiment of clan Sabrae.

Alistair was mystified by the camaraderie, as he was certain no human gathering would have ever proved such selfless goodwill - nor as much suspicion and hostility, on the contrary. The rest of their party (none of whom had the Wardens' cultural-political immunity) were restricted from the more intimate circle of the Va'Linis camp, and had witnessed the desperately cheerful proceedings from a distance, garnering second-hand from Alistair the dire situation and why it was with such urgency Keeper Zathrian had bargained for the treatise.

Hard to lend  _elv'henan_  warriors to a cause if they were all slain within the season, after all.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

There was no cause for the biting stab of jealousy to ever enter Madha'in's life; indeed amongst the Dalish the emotion had no cause to exist. What you owned, the entire clan owned. Who you loved, the entire clan loved. Though sometimes younger, unbonded elves would have their small dramas and heartaches, more usually a pair knew they were to marry before they were ever old enough to have to worry about such things.

It had been so with Gheyna and Cammen.

For the first time in his life, Mathain knew the bitter sting of jealousy. These lovers still had each other, and they were wasting time on clan protocol. He was jealous of what they had, of the  _newness_ of it all for them; the uncertainty in Gheyna's obvious decision to accept Cammen, the impatience and hopelessness in Cammen's denial that there was anything to be done to help them. Mathain was nearly convinced to let the couple just wait it out, at least until the hunters were allowed back into the territories without fear of further monstrous attack, but they  _still had each other_  and were  _wasting precious time_  over the could-be and how-to and all the little what-ifs; and to make matters more urgent there loomed that prevailing threat of  _death_  in the air.

Thus, while Zathrian consulted with the clan's leaders for their next course of action, Mathain Mahariel agreed to take Cammen Urdiel into the forest so he could shoot down a boar.

Mathain chatted easily with Cammen as they left the guarded perimeter of the Dalish camp, and it was with this open stride and calm indulgence that he met Alistair at the fire pit set up just outside the Va'Linis borders. "It is to earn our  _vallaslin_  that we hunt, in Sabrae." A nod of greeting, and no move for anything so absurd as a resounding bash on the chestplate or a headbutt, "Alistair."

Rightly, Alistair had not recognized Mathain as he approached; the image of stamped Dalish leathers and beaded hair and painted arms presented a far cry from the stone-silent half-mad warrior gowned in bandit blood. "Er," Alistair's surprise overtook his usual eloquence, doubling the useful fiction that he was a harmless dullard incapable of the intelligence of treachery.

Mathain slung his shield free and shoved it against Alistair's chest, holding it up until its weight was taken in turn. "We are to hunt. Guard this."

Cammen, though he stood a half-breadth taller than even Mathain, shied in the presence of so many strangelanders, grinning nervously at Leliana's open stare and avoiding Morrigan's periphery completely. Sten, as usual, had busied himself with weapon repairs and hadn't looked up from the cracked longsword, sparing Cammen the terror-fit.

Ignoring the fact that Mathain hadn't bothered to introduce his tag-along (who seemed happy enough to remain anonymous), Alistair interjected, "You aren't going just the two of you? There are  _werewolves_ , Thain!" (the nickname having been silently chosen after Alistair's various injuries to the proper enunciation of Mathain's full name, and slipping out just then in the throes of incredulity.)

Mathain's face quirks up in a guarded smirk. "Aye, a half-day's journey southwest,  _Stair_ ; while our course directs us northeast,  _Stair_."

Alistair shoved the shield right back at Mathain's chest. "You aren't going alone. Whatever this hunting business is, food or trade supply, we can surely accompany."

There was an expected argument that died on its way past Mathain's throat, and he shrugged. "As you wish,  _da'shem_. Tread lightly; leave heavier armor behind. We shall be found past the trail marked by the storm-split poplar. Cammen?"

But Cammen was already ahead of Mathain, eager to finish his task before the day's light ran out. Eager to return to Gheyna, the unmistakable bound in his step that sang of glorious purpose, that which Mathain ached to recognize.

* * *

The musk of the animal preceded its attack, a massive dark blur barreling through the high summer ferns. Mathain had kept five paces behind Cammen's light step down the narrow deer-path, and took the brunt of the rush with an upraised shield. Despite the arrows quilled in its neck, the kill was owed to Mathain's blade - plunged up through the cavernous rib-cage - and Cammen's hunt continued. Mathain bent to begin skinning the bear out of habit while Cammen took to the trees with his longbow.

Alistair blundered onto the path with all the grace the bear had shown, blinking through the dimming fog of the thick forest with worry etched clear across his face. "I thought I heard an animal through h - oh. Oh, that's-"

"The _bel'fen_  must have these wood in a panic." Voice dispassionate, removed by shock; Mathain startled as Leliana, quiet and swift in her stride, knelt to help him field-strip the heavy animal. "Cammen has taken his hunt to the treetops." The animal had passed right by Cammen, gone straight for Mathain, as if sent by -

Alistair, struggling with reluctance, "What is this hunt  _for_ , exactly?"

"A rite of ceremony." A knot had grown in Mathain's gut and sorrow blurred his vision with a loathsome sting. "Dirthamen himself must have sent me this bear." It was a sign, an ill tiding - or else the Gods were as ignorant to his loss as his companions, and had wasted a life on no joyful gift.

Alistair took a log in a scuff of leaflitter, sampling a water skein. "What, sort of a good-luck hunt before we get up to all the werewolf-stabbing?"

"I know the tale of Dirthamen," Leliana perked up through Alistair's suspicion, circling a large hind paw with her dagger to help peel the thick pelt free. "As a story-teller, I have read much of foreign myth. Let us see, if I remember correctly, his tale is a lesson about keeping secrets, no?"

Mathain's mouth had gone thin, and he threw his entire weight into hauling the bear over to expose a better knife-lay. "Myth?" he all but growled. "That 'tale' is the history of my people. Our gods.  _The_  gods."

"Oh, ah - of course," Leliana frowned, wiping a splatter of blood from the hem of her leathers. "I did not mean - "

"Of course you meant no insult. Only you are  _shem_ , and clumsy in courtesy the way Alistair might be clumsy in step."

"Hey," Alistair half-heartedly protested, more to make noise than actually draw Mathain's ire. And here he'd thought they had been getting better, the two of them. Five steps forward, seven steps back; and then the Remigold waltz and a bloody nose, and  _another_  step back. Having fallen off that proverbial horse so often, Alistair had started to wonder if - instead of picking himself up and trying again as the adage goes - if he shouldn't instead begin to question the motives of the damn horse.

Mathain glared over his shoulder, shortsword cleaving through the thick ropes of the bear's tendon before he bent to haul the heavy, fragrant pelt from its hill of flesh and bone. "I have yet to meet a shem that does not make up for any small strength with a large and biting flaw." He glanced up at Leliana, who for all that is staring back at him with the hard edge of curiosity, and he bristled. "'Clever' does not excuse you from arrogance."

"Of course not." Succinct, suspicious, Leliana was not yet acclimated to Mahariel's shifting moods. "I... have been careless with my words yet again. You have my apology." But for all Leliana's sincerity, still she studied the clench of Mathain's jaw as he folded the damp pelt in halves, of the tension in his frame whenever she neared to assist.

Alistair offered his shoulder for the hauling of the skin and Mathain's answer was as venom, "Oh you might as well take it. It is not as if there be use for such a thing,  _ar'abelas_!" Too weighty to throw, the pelt was dropped at Alistair's feet with the heavy slap of blood-wet fur.

Alistair balked, wary. He did not move to take the musty pelt, midges gathering on it like small gray stars on a black sky. "Er. I was thinking we could trade it, probably."

A snarl, "Then why do you not?"

"Well, I think I will?" Alistair's question rose in volume, patience waning, "That's what we've been doing all this time, on the road, isn't it?"

Mathain laughed hard and bitter.

Leliana moved between them to push at Alistair's arm. "Let us take the pelt back. We know our intrepid friend can handle himself in these woods, do we not?"

Alistair scoffed. " _Handle_  himself? He's having a fit over something we've already been doing for  _weeks_  -"

Mathain sneered, fists balled at his sides, " _Elvarel_ , da'shemlen."

Alistair threw his hands up, shrugging Leliana away. "Did you just  _insult_  me? Get over here and help us carry this stinking pelt and stop  _acting like a nutter_ , or -"

" _Ga'rannis -_ leave it there to rot, if it please you! There is no  _use_  for it!" Mathain turned his back, arms folded, shoulders shrugged up nearly to his ears.

"Alistair," Leliana's voice was flint, and when her hand returned to Alistair's arm it brooked no argument. "I think perhaps it is you who is most suited to carry the pelt back to camp." She dipped her chin, vibrant blue gaze steady under pale eyebrows, "Be a dear, and take it for us? I should like to speak with Mathain, alone." She dropped her eyes, her voice, stepping in closer so as to not be overheard. "Look how he is trembling, as a leaf about to fall from its tree."

"He's already fallen from his tree," Alistair dead-panned. "Hitting every branch on the way down. With his  _head_. You can't possibly think these episodes of his are _-_ are what, I don't know, you tell me." Then, louder, "You  _do_  know that in shem culture it's considered really,  _really_  bad to hit a woman of the cloth, right?" When Mathain did not answer, Alistair sighed. Leliana offered no further recourse, stepping away with a curt nod. With one last shrug, Alistair bent to gather the bear pelt in an awkward bundle. "All right. Don't come crying to me when you get stabbed."

Leliana's smile was, despite the situation, warm. "I am not the type of woman who so easily surrenders to tears, my friend."

* * *

The trio made good on their return to camp, Cammen satisfied with a doe skin and Leliana carrying legs of venison while Mathain bore the rest of the deer's carcass over his shoulders (striding effortlessly under its weight, scowling, dutiful). Alistair was helping Sten to strip and tan the bear hide, or more realistically it was Sten who did the heavy lifting and Alistair who tried to be somewhat helpful with an extra arm or two for the stretching rack. Morrigan was the one who applied the ammoniatic paste, the curve of the tanning knife dull and dark in the pungent task.

The mabari hound circled their small camp, ears to the wind of the northeast.

"Is he...?" Alistair mumbled to Leliana, wiping a bead of sweat from his jaw as Leliana bent to set the legs to a carving spit.

"We spoke. I was soundly rebuffed," This, delivered with a cheer that belied a half-truth. "It is promised, though; by the time of the wedding Mathain shall be a degree more cheerful." A sunny laugh. "Could you imagine it? I have never seen a Dalish wedding, and there is to be a feast, oh, and story-telling! We are invited by the bridegroom."

Alistair's confusion only doubled. "A wedding, in the middle of all this?"

Leliana shrugged. "Of course not. But once we have conquered our foe, Cammen - our fearless hunter - shall present his kill to the implacable young Gheyna to win her hand at long last. It is only up to us, foreign interlopers we may be, to end the terror of the dread wolf -"

"The Dread Wolf is a god, and has nothing to do with Witherfang." Mathain appeared at Alistair's elbow as he stood from the bear hyde.

Leliana's eyes sparkled in mischief. "Oh, but it sounds so much better to put 'dread' before the title of our nemesis, does it not?"

Alistair, wide-eyed, searched the air between Laysister and Grey Warden.

Mathain scoffed, but replied carefully; "As you say,  _ma'moiselle_."

"Your opinion is valued,  _dor'falon_." Leliana's Orlesian accent proved a clumsy attempt at the elvish word, and at her curtsy Mathain chuckled. "Now to wash the muck of our journey off," Leliana, smug, departed.

Alistair watched her pass with narrowed eyes. "What. Was. That."

Mathain, neutrally, "She called me 'grey friend'."

"Aaaand what did you call her?"

"The Orlesian word used to address young, unmarried women."

"... You two are having wild crazy-person sex whenever I turn my back, aren't you?"

Mathain straightened, as if pinched. " _What_?"

"I'm sorry, Thain, I just can't wrap my head around your rank and file of crazy and her rank and file of crazy ever making friendly without  _physical intervention_. And you certainly didn't try to beat the conformity into her, as you do with me; which I don't like by the way."

Mathain shook his head, reluctant to even address the flood of  _shemhood_  that had just spilled into the conversation as if someone had knocked Alistair over like a tea carafe. "You are true in that Leliana is... touched, in a way. Her faith is unshakable, but so it is with most indoctrinated during their time of need. To be so strongly devoted to a lie, there must be a measure of solace in it. To so need that solace, there must have been a grave catastrophe in her life. 'Tis not for us to judge the misery of others, da'shem, only to set the better example."

"...Who  _are_  you?"

Mathain sighed, deep and long and patient. "I am Madha'in of the Grey." A flicker in the stone of his expression. "Or else, I am trying to be."

"Allll right... But if that's so, then what's all this about a wedding? We - the Wardens - us, we - don't exactly have  _time_  for that sort of thing."

"And no use for a rose, but still  _you_  bent to the roadside to dig with your sword until the bloom was uprooted." Mathain crossed his arms, chin lifted. "There is no  _time_  at all where a celebration of life would go remiss.  _Especially_  in moments of darkness, is that not what you said?"

The reluctance tugged at the corners of Alistair's mouth. He didn't mind that there was a celebration at the end of this bloody mess, but the sooner they were away from the Dalish camp the sooner Mathain could go back to his broody complacency with darkspawn-felling. "I did say that, didn't I? But I can't talk to you right now if you're going to be twenty different people from one moment to the next, thanks much."

"Corral your assumptions, I have only ever been the one man." A discomfited hitch of the shoulder, armor creaking where it had been knocked into an ill fit by the bear's weight.

"A man who would first dump a chamber pot on a religious leader but turn around to skip hand-in-hand with someone from the same order. My guess being - and stop me if I'm wrong here - Leliana just so happens to be  _a lot_  cuter than that poor withered prune of a Revered Mother; but nah, that would make far too much  _sense_  to be any truth of yours."

Ducking his head, Mathain stepped forward. "Leliana is many things, but fie you for a fool if you honestly think of her a Chantry devout. An Andrastian Devout, yes, but that is no fault of hers. That blame ought be laid at the feet of the shemlen leaders who offer the false respite to any what might find independent thought too heavy a responsibility."

After soaking this in, Alistair drew his conclusion with a twisting grimace. " _Morrigan_."

"What," Morrigan answered dispassionately, folding herbs into poultice near the fireside.

Alistair forced a grin over the top of Mathain's head. "Sorry, nevermind, thought you had morphed into a Dalish madman just to get under my skin." Eyes narrowing, "False. Alarm."

Morrigan shook her head, standing from her task to dust her hands together. "In this rare instance I would find myself siding with you, Alistair. We've no time for such frivolities as match-making and the eating of wedding pastries."

"Has the Black City itself fallen from the sky? Something in the water, maybe?" Alistair contemplated the tree canopy with gravity. "Not that I'm complaining. I like the fact that everyone is getting along so well all of a sudden. Something's just telling me not to trust any of it," this directed at Morrigan, who approached Mathain with a pensive frown.

"If we're  _quite_ finished on assisting your little friend with his rite of manhood - ?" Morrigan scoffed at Alistair's indignant sputter, "In regards to the deer-hunt. Honestly Alistair, do you  _never_  pay heed to that which is going on around you? 'Tis not advanced thermology, these inter-personal fracasi."

"Okay," Alistair lamented, "Now you're just making words up."

* * *

Insects whined insistently at the slats of Alistair's helmet, drifting ever nearer his course-blooded skin until he could lurch forward, down the trail, leaving one cloud of gnats behind for another. He paused as the traveling party would pause, and the insects would draw near again - midges and sweat-flies, strange gossamer-winged pests and larger, meatier buzzhoards with spear-tipped faces and multifaceted eyes. Insects with jeweled bodies and insects with dull brown wings, silent insects and noisy ones, invisible pinches nattering along the metal slats of his gear. For the third time that day, Alistair would find himself removing his helmet, after the battles they'd seen - bear, wolf, werewolf, even darkspawn nearer the rocky caves. He mopped at his neck and the back of his head with the rough paw of his leather glove, gauntlet grazing an ear as he tried to wick away the itch of sweat and biting dornerflies.

They paused along a creek, their party of four; with a handful of Dalish keeping vigilance above, arrow support in the tree heights. Alistair bent to a knee to try and cool the budding insect welts, gauntlet tucked under an arm as he cupped water to splash over the back of his neck. Shaking like an irritated hound, he wrung a pinky into the shell of his ear with a grimace. A hand slid into view, the curl of a loose brown fist, and Alistair flinched away from the smell of it.

"Don't be a child," Mathain scolded quietly, fingers uncurling to reveal what Alistair could assume was no better than muck scraped off the bottom of the creek, if not for the fact that it smelled also of pine and - something else. Something sharp, heady and oily in the back of his nose as the hand slid up against the side of his neck.

Alistair stilled, breath stifled by the shock of cool relief. Mathain's hand curled over the back of his neck, reaching up into the short crop of his hair before leaving him half-smeared in who knew what. That hand returned, heavy with the paste once more, to soothe behind his ears and down over the front of his throat, thumb lingering behind the hinge of his jaw. Alistair risked a glance to the side occupied by standing elf - Mathain was looking away, ear lifted to the bird-mock whistles from the tree canopy, paused in his task.

Once reassured that he wasn't being  _caressed_ , Alistair hauled himself to an abrupt stand from the riverbank. "Give us a warning next time you do that," he croaked, tugging his helmet back on. But Mathain was already striding away, bent low, sword and shield held at the ready. Something hulking and grey flashed between the trees up the hill, and their party reformed to meet the challenge.

* * *

"Have you... ever been in love?"

Alistair rolled his eyes and groaned, shifting from foot to foot. Tension held his spine in a lock against the weight of his armor - he didn't like crazy people as a general rule, they were unpredictable and their motives far more hidden than even the better of the bards. To watch Mathain try and speak reason to a  _forest hermit_  was about as painful as watching an otter try to knit itself a hat. Fascinating, sure, but absurd and pointless.

"Aye," Mathain grunted his usual stone-wall answer, after his usual contemplative silence. They were seven questions in, and had only so far learned that their goals in that forest were sevens kinds of futile.

"What, really?" Alistair interrupted, amused and impatient. "Was she fifteen feet tall and also a blighted  _tree_? Because that's the type of thing we're actually dealing with, here."

The hermit pinched his mouth Alistair's way, but regarded Mathain with the same recital, brown teeth flashing between his whisper - "A question for a question, that's how the game works. Go on, go on! Ask us another."

Mathain breathed in, slow and careful. "Art thou hungry, old one?"

The smile this prompted gave Alistair a bad chill, and the hermit purred his answer, "Not for the usual thing, I would say." His emaciated chest hitched in a laugh, flashing black gaps between brown molars.

Mathain stepped forward, "So you  _do_  answer to it. Old One."

"Is that a question?"

"Nae, but that is. You'll owe me two."

The wrinkled face screwed up in frustration, a growl from a puckered beard with dead leaves in it. "You and yours. You all think you're so smart! But I've shown you, haven't I?" A deranged giggle. "I showed them all."

"Aye, and now ye walk alone in the world for't. Not so grand as you thought? Cunning old thing, alone but for yer stories, lost and aimless now as your vengeance keeps ye." Bolstered by the conversation, Mathain stood straighter, speaking with a confidence that commanded Alistair's renewed interest. "Unresolved, I'd say, and too fearful of what lies above or below to rectify your mistakes.  _Ha'Relaan_." Mathain shook his head.

The old man, for once, had gone silent. "I trust," he whispered, after an impatient cough from Morrigan over by the fire, "That my secret is yours to keep, you who are named for Mathen'in. The one who needs to wake, yes, who sleeps inside its cave."

Alistair blinked, certain no such introductions were ever passed, though the scholar in him recognized regional aberration from language, quite possibly altered through oral history.  The Dalish had long been robbed of their written words, after all, and it wouldn't be the first time some cracked old apostate harbored obscure knowledges beside their insanity.

"You tore the world down around your own ears," Mathain scolded. "We only fear you because you  _are_  fearful. A coward," he spit, "That which strikes out blind at those it might have loved - no wonder ye look like a  _shem_ to us now."

"Shut up," the old man sneered, voice gaining pitch and volume as he recited the command, bending at the waist, bobbing up and down like a screeching bird. "Silence, silence, silence, you-!"

Mathain stood resolute, confident on their circumstance and exactly what to say, accent thick and throaty, "Ye used to be noble! Ye used to be  _joyful_!"

The old man screamed in retort, "And you were all pitiful, shivering and bowing and  _haunted_!"

Alistair drew his sword and stepped a little closer to Mathain's side. The others, who had been listening at a more politely disinterested distance, neared.

The old man was raving proper now; a vein crept purple and crooked up one cheek and over the corner of a rheumy eye. "I  _saved_  you! I saved you all from the terrors! It was never your war to wage, and I was the  _only_  one who loved you in true-" Morrigan's staff came whizzing down through the air, aimed at the juncture between the old man's neck and shoulder. A craggy, bulge-knuckled hand caught the blow, and the eyes that narrowed at Mathain were for a moment young, and sly, and full of clarity. But then there was a flash, a puff of grit and smoke, and a cracked, aged voice in the campfire - "Fair's fair, young one. A trade is fair as anything, sure as the cock crows."

Mathain crossed his arms, unimpressed by Morrigan's bewildered glare. "The cock can crow as it wants, Old One.  They'll not wake for it, nor thee." He tapped the side of his nose. "We'll make the trade. I know what it wants."

"It?" Alistair's sword remained drawn the short walk to their traveling packs, even as Mathain bent to shuffle out a thick, leather-bound book.

Mathain straightened, and Alistair had too often seen faces that young with eyes that old in them to question further.

He lingered behind, did Alistair, to watch Morrigan and Mathain convene by the hollow tree stump, to watch the large, heart-sized acorn unearthed as the book was lost. Traded. Leliana crouched wide-eyed and silent between the two points, and mouthed the word 'dread'.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :

* * *

These were days to the witness of the sky and the earth - that war-cries rang through the trees, the howling of the wronged abominations clashed to elvhenan oaths, the scream of mana along steel. That Madha'in Mahariel looked often robbed of the blood from his veins, stuck mid-step to finding another dead clansman, finding ghosts in the faces he would touch - that would then be touched by all of clan Va'Linis. That Mathain shared a familiarity with the carnage that Alistair knew too well himself; that loss did visibly hurt, but that this hurt was as wind to the storm, the ineffable cause and inexhaustible source of a rage Sabrae's Mahariel would only grow more the famous for.

The clan remained exclusive of their shemlen visitors, wedding celebration hosted along the banks of their nearest river, far enough from the main camp that Mahariel's strange collective of followers might join. To some relief, not all did accept the invite, and those that made their appearance very soon retired from the guarded looks and expectant pauses. Alistair did wait twenty paces from the celebration, looking on from afar with his arms crossed, shield resting against the tree on which he leaned.

But ah, these were the days to the witness of the sky and the earth, that Mathain Mahariel did keep the bedside of Degan Birch'reagh, and when they spoke Matha'in wore the face of a lost man. This was to the witness, that Mathain Mahariel did embrace Athras Iniadin, he who lost his wife to a monstrous end, and they did speak much to one another during the wedding feast, and it was to witness - that Alistair of the Grey, not with ears but with eyes from twenty paces off, knew of Mathain Mahariel's retirement to Athras Iniadin's  _aravel_ , there to stay until the morning sky could find him.

In these days - for they were brief and much opposed in their natures - in these days of blood and music was Alistair of the Grey still  _shem_ , foreign and clumsy, sympathetic without understanding, observant without wisdom.

And once the feast concluded, once the bondspair emerged blinking and shy and glowing from their aravel, the clan did set back to its busy ways of sword and bow and shield-craft, readying to scout and gather the scattered number of Dalish clans against the Blight. The worry laid there still, just on the small ridge of Mathain's dark brow, but he was blinking and shy and glowing as he rejoined the Warden camp, and the earth and the sky did witness this, and Alistair of the Grey did not - for he was, in these days to the witness of the sky and earth which did keep its defenders, still shem who was deaf and blind to that which showed itself before him.

"Was there any better way we could have handled that, you think?" Alistair did ponder by the fire, while Mathain Mahariel sat calmly distracted beside.

"Mmh?" The blood had returned to Mathain's face, and he would look for some time yet as the painted warrior of beads and wooden comb and skittish freedom in owlish eyes.

"If we'd maybe, I don't know. Tried to find a way to keep them from killing each other? Surely Zathrian could have been reasoned with - and the werewolves, well, they weren't  _stupid_ , just cursed. I thought your people were taught to, um, respect the forest? That's the general idear I've seen, at least."

"It was wrong of Zathrian to have done what he did," Mathain agreed in the dreamy detached way of one who might find themselves newly blooded, and only now is it that Alistair might lend his witness to the state of things, to that which the sky and the earth could share between one another, secrets of no ill passion. "Every life lost to the  _bel'fen_  is a loss he will carry 'til the last of his days." Mathain does place his hand on his armored knee, bracing himself forward. "Think you that justice might somehow escape him? Half of his beloved are dead, all for a revenge on a few that were lost long ago. I would say Zathrian might be the oldest living Dalish, but he is very young, and was born even younger still, and will be young in the lives he might yet see." The hand patted, removed itself to put knuckles against Alistair's chestplate in a hollow knock. "We treat our young with forgiveness, so that they might learn."

"We treat  _our_  young with a good smack, so that they don't kill each other in play."

Mathain's mouth twisted up, "That's awful." And this was, to witness, how Alistair of the Grey did first see a laugh that  _he_  had coaxed from Mathain of the Grey, did see the flash of white teeth and the merry curl of his eyes, did hear the husk of his voice and the chuff of his breath. Mathain, beaded and painted and merry, raised a hand to call the attention of a border watch, sharing - "Shem children run the risk of killing each other in play!"

And the border watchwoman did laugh, a bark of sound that shared itself to the witness of the earth and the sky, and she answered - "Of course they do!" For it was to the knowledge of Mathain, of the clan and its border patrol, of the earth and the sky that were there to witness, that shemlen did mean 'quick-blooded  _child_ ', and Alistair had delighted Mathain Mahariel with, of all things, a pun.

But these were the days to the witness of the sky and the earth which carried the chase of the sun and the moon, and did not find themselves in rote or transcript, in legend or rumor. What the world of shems would remember of Mad Mahariel contained only the bitterness of his winters without the warmth of his summers; the ruthless howling storm that was his fervor - but with no contrast from the balmy refuge that was his friendship; the anger and the ferocity on the battlefield and in the political ring by no comparison beside the ferocity of his loyalty and the warmth of his love. It was the secret for the earth and the sky to keep between one another, that Mad Mahariel could command himself to intelligence, compassion and even joy. That there were unreasonable actions taken for the sake of reasonable ends. That Mad Mahariel's was a life of loss and fear at first tread free of the womb, and storm-born so he would walk the rest of his days, tempest-tossed.

These were the days that would pass in the witness of, eventually, Alistair of the Grey - who would by fortune nurture a keen interest in the secrets Mad Mahariel did keep so close between the loam of the earth and the press of the chill night sky.

* * *

: : o : : o : : o : :


End file.
